Nominalism can be dangerous, especially because it's contributing to the inability to hear the yet unheard.
When discovering the first chapter to Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment, I didn't think of investigating the cultural and historical background in which this text was born. What a mistake it was.
Thankfully, on monday's lecture, we took the time to paint the whole picture, and I realized then how it sometimes can change your understanding of an essay.
Escaping from an at-war Germany, to a country they believed represented freedom and culture, Adorno and Horkheimer soon became disillusioned : in a society ruled by consumption and social order, they realized the Enlightenment, or so they decided to call it, wasn't a way towards freedom, far from it actually.
By trying to demistify the world, mankind focused on observable repetitive phenomena they previously explained by Myths and superstition, to escape their fear of the unknown. But this only served as a bait to distance themselves from Nature, make them appear as rulers of Nature, when actually they couldn't even intervene in those patterns because they, themselves, were products of Nature - made of molecules, and particules... In this sense, they're "programmed" by Nature for everything : there's no free will whatsoever, and everything is just a result of mimesis. Again, by participating in this natural chain of reaction, mankind's fate intertwined again with Myth, after having so desperately tried to free themselves from it with the Enlightenment.
But what really is the point behind Adorno and Horkheimer's essay ? Why the interest in the Enlightenment?
To understand that, we have to explain more precisely the concept of Nominalism, inherently the most central argument of the Enlightement: In contrast with Realism, which believes in a conceptual and unbiased world ("God's point of view", like in Theme 1) and is related to analytic judgement, Nominalism focuses on a world as perceived through experience. In a nominalist point of view, each object is unique, with its own set of particularities and characteristics, and is tied to the concept it exemplifies only by a single fragile thread. To link this with Plato's Allegory of the Cave, the outside world would be the world in Realism, made of "pure" concepts, where such a thing as a "perfect chair" would exist, while the world in the mirror would be the world of flawed copies. For a nominalist person, the outside world doesn't make sense, concepts and abstract ideas do not exist : unity is the one thing ruling the world. In that sense, all deity and mystical figures are out of the question, and because of that, Nominalism is the core concept in the Enlightenment.
According to Adorno and Horkheimer, this is the one thing that's most dangerous in the Enlightement: indeed, Nominalism states the obvious facts. It's built on observation, just like the Enlightenment - and leads us to just reproduce a mirror of what already exists... In this sense, no real change could be possible. Take Fascism for example: from a fascist point of view, there is such a thing as natural hierarchical order, where some people are born to be masters whereas others are born to be slaves. If we address this view with Nominalism, you'd see this pattern, reproduce it, repeat what's already done. There's no escaping, since concepts like universal human rights wouldn't exist. You'd be unable to hear the yet unheard.
By condemning Nominalism and the Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer are denouncing both Fascism and the ever developping consumer's society in the USA, where people fest on culture as if it were a way to freedom, while they argue it's nothing but another way to chain people down. Indeed, culture in mass media tended to reflect the way the world was built - as in the Enlightenment and Nominalism. By depicting the world, with ordinary people doing ordinary work, mass culture was responsible for making people repeat the same gesture over and over again, and did nothing else than just show the social situation as it was then. It didn't give us conditions to change it, rather, it even glorified the situation, according to Adorno and Horkheimer !
Movies portray life as it is now, a mimesis reaction again, instead of picturing something we can strive towards.
In that sense, Adorno and Horkheimer's take on mass media diverges from Benjamin's own point of view. Indeed, based on Cubism, the new media culture had, according to Benjamin, revolutionary potentials: by changing our way to view the world with fragmentation, it could change our role in the society as well ! Movies depicted ordinary people, and every worker had the right to claim he could be in a movies: by doing so, Benjamin argued that mass culture media gave dignity to ordinary folks.
Nonetheless, they all agreed on how dangerous the use of Art in Fascism was, given that it beautified politics using Art.
After the seminar and the lecture, my understanding of the texts shifted a bit, and I'm glad we had so many opportunities to get a clearer view of difficult points by sharing our opinions with others and seeing what they themselves felt about the issue.
Thankfully, on monday's lecture, we took the time to paint the whole picture, and I realized then how it sometimes can change your understanding of an essay.
Escaping from an at-war Germany, to a country they believed represented freedom and culture, Adorno and Horkheimer soon became disillusioned : in a society ruled by consumption and social order, they realized the Enlightenment, or so they decided to call it, wasn't a way towards freedom, far from it actually.
By trying to demistify the world, mankind focused on observable repetitive phenomena they previously explained by Myths and superstition, to escape their fear of the unknown. But this only served as a bait to distance themselves from Nature, make them appear as rulers of Nature, when actually they couldn't even intervene in those patterns because they, themselves, were products of Nature - made of molecules, and particules... In this sense, they're "programmed" by Nature for everything : there's no free will whatsoever, and everything is just a result of mimesis. Again, by participating in this natural chain of reaction, mankind's fate intertwined again with Myth, after having so desperately tried to free themselves from it with the Enlightenment.
But what really is the point behind Adorno and Horkheimer's essay ? Why the interest in the Enlightenment?
To understand that, we have to explain more precisely the concept of Nominalism, inherently the most central argument of the Enlightement: In contrast with Realism, which believes in a conceptual and unbiased world ("God's point of view", like in Theme 1) and is related to analytic judgement, Nominalism focuses on a world as perceived through experience. In a nominalist point of view, each object is unique, with its own set of particularities and characteristics, and is tied to the concept it exemplifies only by a single fragile thread. To link this with Plato's Allegory of the Cave, the outside world would be the world in Realism, made of "pure" concepts, where such a thing as a "perfect chair" would exist, while the world in the mirror would be the world of flawed copies. For a nominalist person, the outside world doesn't make sense, concepts and abstract ideas do not exist : unity is the one thing ruling the world. In that sense, all deity and mystical figures are out of the question, and because of that, Nominalism is the core concept in the Enlightenment.
According to Adorno and Horkheimer, this is the one thing that's most dangerous in the Enlightement: indeed, Nominalism states the obvious facts. It's built on observation, just like the Enlightenment - and leads us to just reproduce a mirror of what already exists... In this sense, no real change could be possible. Take Fascism for example: from a fascist point of view, there is such a thing as natural hierarchical order, where some people are born to be masters whereas others are born to be slaves. If we address this view with Nominalism, you'd see this pattern, reproduce it, repeat what's already done. There's no escaping, since concepts like universal human rights wouldn't exist. You'd be unable to hear the yet unheard.
By condemning Nominalism and the Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer are denouncing both Fascism and the ever developping consumer's society in the USA, where people fest on culture as if it were a way to freedom, while they argue it's nothing but another way to chain people down. Indeed, culture in mass media tended to reflect the way the world was built - as in the Enlightenment and Nominalism. By depicting the world, with ordinary people doing ordinary work, mass culture was responsible for making people repeat the same gesture over and over again, and did nothing else than just show the social situation as it was then. It didn't give us conditions to change it, rather, it even glorified the situation, according to Adorno and Horkheimer !
Movies portray life as it is now, a mimesis reaction again, instead of picturing something we can strive towards.
In that sense, Adorno and Horkheimer's take on mass media diverges from Benjamin's own point of view. Indeed, based on Cubism, the new media culture had, according to Benjamin, revolutionary potentials: by changing our way to view the world with fragmentation, it could change our role in the society as well ! Movies depicted ordinary people, and every worker had the right to claim he could be in a movies: by doing so, Benjamin argued that mass culture media gave dignity to ordinary folks.
Nonetheless, they all agreed on how dangerous the use of Art in Fascism was, given that it beautified politics using Art.
After the seminar and the lecture, my understanding of the texts shifted a bit, and I'm glad we had so many opportunities to get a clearer view of difficult points by sharing our opinions with others and seeing what they themselves felt about the issue.
ReplyDeleteHere, I would like to talk about your post and pre-seminar blogposts. I like how meticulous you are in your description of Enlightenment. You show detailed understanding of the topic. I especially like the part where you say that Enlightenment is deeply rooted in the human desire to dominate nature and it is about freeing ourselves from myth and how it was a way to enslave us even further. I think you have some pretty interesting things going on in your reflection. Then you go on to criticize enlightenment as being black and white wrong or right and you consider this as a failure in Enlightenment and how it failed to deliver its promises to human beings. You further argue that “This flaw is undeniably related to the concept of nominalism.” I am not sure how these are connected.
Your post-seminar reflection is quite interesting and I agree that the lecture and the seminar helped us understand the the reading tremendously. I also agree with your concluding remarks about the potencies that art posses to inspire change. But the gem of your text, what I forgot to talk about in my reflection, is “By condemning Nominalism and the Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer are denouncing both Fascism and the ever developing consumer's society in the USA..” All in all, you have written two engaging pieces of text. Cheers!
Hello Agri,
DeleteRegarding the link between nominalism and the Enlightenment: to me, the Enlightenment is failing in its promise to bring freedom to mankind partly because it is built on the concept of nominalism. Indeed, by basing itself on an observation of the world as we perceive it - in a way, that's what nominalism pushes us to do -, the Enlightenment leads us to reproduce a vision of what's already existent (dangerous especially in a world where fascism strives), without even having the opportunity to introduce something new because we don't have concepts like human rights, equity, etc.
This is actually something I understood better thanks to the seminar, as it wasn't very clear to me even after the lecture!!
Thank you very much for your detailed comment ! :-)
Great reflection! Your short snippets in italics are really nice!
ReplyDeleteI for one did not really understand the point that nominalism can be dangerous in enlightenment because it keeps us from looking beyond what is.
The point that culture can be used as means of oppression is also a view I will take with me, what did you think about the historical context of the texts? I found them even more interesting when thinking about them considering when and where they were written.
Keep up the good work!
Hello Josefine,
DeleteThank you very much for your comment :-)!
To me, nominalism can be dangerous when pushed to its limits because it disables us from having another take on the world than the one that's adopted currently. In this sense, in a world where fascism for example strives, we'd be stuck in this hierarchical society without having the possibility to see beyond, because we don't have abstract concepts such as the fact that all people were born equal - the universal human rights !
I agree with you, the historical context of the texts is really important to take into account, seeing as they were written for Adorno and Horkheimer in the wake of their desillusion from the Usa being the land of freedom, and Benjamin in the tumult and horror of the Fascism reign..
Thanks again for your insight :-)
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your essay and obviously you did lots of work on it.It is good that you could combine your explanation with history context on your own view. I like what you said"reproduce a mirror of what already exists",Facism used the media to take control of our mind,noble is born to be noble;poverty is born to be poverty. Also,you did it well on explaining the divergence of Adorno and Benjamin.
Keep it up.
Thanks for further elaborating on the Allegory of the Cave; even though I've had that in my bachelor's as well, it never quite resonated with me as clearly as I would've liked to. If I understand correctly, a nominalist denies the existence of the world 'outside' of the cave, relying only on that which can be seen in the mirror - i.e. anything beyond the instances which can be observed. I think it paints a clearer image of a somewhat unworldy scope, which is at the base of the fascist views you describe can can therefore lead to a rather un-enlightened outcome.
ReplyDeleteSo nice and professional reflection! This post illustrates your well understanding of this theme, which has been widely discussed with details. Both the Italics and underlines are great and helpful to follow your ideas. I like your blog and agree with you very much. It is very good to know that investigating something within its born context though the cultural and historical lens.a more completed picture and a more reasonable sense can be achieved. This is a very good way to approach and understand some critical theories with a history. As paradigm shifts, our understanding could be developed as well. However, putting our feet into the right shoes can always help us get a better understanding of what it really is. Thanks for sharing your insightful and interesting reflections. Well done!
ReplyDelete